The Satan Pit (TV story)
The Satan Pit 'is the ninth episode of the second series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Matt Jones, directed by Euros Lyn and featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler. Overview To be added Synopsis The supposedly servile Ood are now under the control of the mysterious Beast that describes itself as Satan and claims to be a being that has existed since before the creation of the known universe. Rose takes charge and tries to find a way to get everyone out safely. Meanwhile, the Doctor is trapped miles into the bowels of the planet, unable to return to the surface. With no options left, he descends into the Pit and comes into confrontation with the Beast and finds the solution. The only problem is that the solution may kill everybody else and the Doctor is forced to question his morals and values to save lives... Plot Rose, Jefferson and Toby are still besieged by the Ood in the section of drill operations and Jefferson and another soldier open fire on them. The orbit around the Krop-Tor is reestablished; once the three Ood in the drill section are dead, Danny arrives and informs them that all the Ood are under the same influence. Jefferson goes to confront them but they kill the other soldier. Zach tries to go and help but is cut off by advancing Ood and seals himself in the control room. With the emergency status, Zach and Jefferson agree to enact Strategy 9 when the Doctor and Ida get back in contact and tell them that the seal opened up, leaving nothing but the black pit. While Rose panics about what the Ood was saying, Zach orders the pair to withdraw so that Strategy 9 can be implemented, but Ida ignores him. Despite the Doctor's urge to descend into the pit to learn the truth, he ultimately decides to retreat. Up on the base, Jefferson opts to execute Toby for bringing the force aboard but Rose manages to dissuade him for the time being. When Rose asks him about his experience, he tells her that he feels he was possessed by the devil. Ida and the Doctor return to the capsule, while Ida explains that Strategy 9 involves expelling all the Ood through the airlocks while they are safe inside the lockdown. As Rose, Jefferson and Danny prepare to pull them up, the base loses power and the Ood take control of all the security feeds. The entity controlling the Ood gives an ominous warning to all the members of the crew while addressing the Doctor as the "killer of his own kind" and predicting that Rose will soon die in battle. It claims to have existed before the presence of time, something the Doctor finds hard to believe before it cuts communications and all the humans start to panic. The Doctor forces everybody to listen to him and gives them a bolster of confidence so as to keep them fighting when the cable to the capsule suddenly severs and falls to the center of the planet, trapping them both down there with only 55 minutes of air. The Ood start breaking into the habitated sections of the station and Rose reinforces what the Doctor was saying, giving everybody ideas on how to survive. Zach siphons power from the rocket to provide some light for the base while Danny theorises a means of disabling the Ood. Down the shaft, while the capsule is destroyed, the Doctor and Ida decide to use the 10-miles of cable to descend into the pit. Ida volunteers to go down, but the Doctor insists that he be the one to be descended instead. Meanwhile, Danny creates a broadcast flare that will take out the Ood but tells Rose that he needs to do it from Ood Habitation. Jefferson finds a series of shafts beneath the base which would get them to Ood Habitation and Zach works on oxygenating them so they can get through without suffocating. By the pit, the Doctor and Ida jury rig the winch into a lifeline and the Doctor starts his descent. Downloading Danny's flare onto a chip, the humans drop into the shafts below and Zach feeds them air. They are stopped at a junction while Zach moves the air to the next section and the Ood drop into the tunnels after them and Zach opens the gate to let them continue. The humans quickly scurry through the shafts away from the Ood. Jefferson halts to delay them while the others get away; needing to close gate 8.1 before 9.2, Zach orders Jefferson to hurry but he doesn't make the gate before it closes. Zach informs Jefferson that he can't open the gate without cutting off the others' air so Jefferson, resigned to his fate requests a death with dignity and asks Zach if he could hasten the removal of air from that section before the Ood take him. Zach complies with his request and Jefferson and the Ood die while Zach and Danny put their respects for him and his sacrifice on record. As gate 9.2 opens, there are Ood waiting behind it and Danny, Rose and Toby are forced to flee back into the corridor above. As the Ood start to break into the control room, Danny manages to insert the flare into the Ood Habitation monitor and all the Ood on the base collapse from a brainstorm as their telepathic field flattens. Everybody heads back to the drill operations to get the Doctor and Ida back up. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ida discuss different theologies and representations of the devil throughout the universe as he goes deeper into the pit. Soon, the Doctor runs out of cable and can't go down any further; with no way of telling how much further is the bottom, the Doctor decides to detach himself from the cable and fall the rest of the way. While Zach and Rose try to reestablish contact, Ida pleads with the Doctor not to go down but nonetheless, he unclips himself from the harness and plummets into the blackness. After he's gone, the others reach Ida and she tells them that the Doctor is gone; Zach mournfully reports to Ida that they can't get her out and that the rest of them are evacuating. Ida understands and respects his decision; Rose chooses to stay behind and wait for the Doctor to think of something to return but Zach has Danny and Toby restrain her while he gives her a sedative and carries her to the rocket, refusing to leave her behind after all the people he's lost that day. As they head to the rocket, the Ood start to regain consciousness and they get a move on. At the bottom of the pit, the Doctor awakens, visor shattered but still able to breath, his fall supported by an air cushion. On the rocket, Zach starts the take-off procedure as Rose wakes up to protest and the Rocket launches. The Doctor and Ida hear the ship leave from afar; onboard, Rose tries to threaten Zach to take her back to the planet but faulters, unable to follow through. The Doctor examines murals painted in the chasm portraying a battle with man against the Beast in which the imprisoned it in the pit. He finds two vases acting as the keys to it's prison before being confronted by a giant horned beast chained to the wall. The Doctor tries to fathom the answers to it before finally realising that the creature in front of him is just the body of the beast, that his mind escaped somehow and just flew away on the rocket. While the ship flies up the gravity funnel, the Doctor realises that it was the Beast's jailors that gave him air so that if he or anybody else arrived when the Beast tried to escape, they could stop it. However, he also recognises that the system of stopping the Beast, freeing it and sending the planet falling into the black hole, would also destroy the gravity funnel, sending the rocket inside with it. Regardless of this, the Doctor proclaims that despite all the legends of devils and gods throughout the universe, his faith in Rose is absolute and shatters the key to the Beast's prison, destroying the gravity funnel in the process. On the rocket, the Beast's mind possesses Toby again and Rose shoots out the window, sending the possessed Toby toward the black hole. As the planet falls into the black hole as well, Ida falls into unconsciousness as the Doctor rushes through the collapsing caves stumbling back against the wall, to discover to his absolute joy, his TARDIS. The planet falls into the black hole, but before the rocket follows the same fate, it stablises and turns away from it; the Doctor gets in touch with the rocket from the TARDIS and reveals that he is pulling them away from it and that he managed to save Ida from the planet's collapse but failed to save the Ood. Once they are a safe distance away, Rose reunites with the Doctor in the TARDIS while Ida joins Zach and Danny in the rocket. Before they depart, the Doctor and Rose say their farewells to the others, still none the wiser about what the creature was, what it's forewarnings meant and what the scripture said but nonetheless satisfied and they take off. As the rocket flies back to Earth, Zach makes a final report, giving each of the dead a memorial with honour. Cast * The Doctor - David Tennant * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper * Mr. Jefferson - Danny Webb * Zachary Cross Flane - Shaun Parkes * Ida Scott - Claire Rushbrook * Toby Zed - Will Thorp * Danny Bartock - Ronny Jhutti * The Ood - Paul Kasey * The Voice of the Beast - Gabriel Woolf * The Voice of the Ood - Silas Carson Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Satan Pit'' page on '''Doctor Who Website